Netanyahu Speech to US Congress

It isn’t this arrogant criminal’s speech that is shocking the World. We all recognize his brand of violent sectarianism and aggressive racism. The shock comes from seeing the US lawmakers, elected by a free nation where every adult has a vote, applauding this criminal’s open declarations of every aggressive stance he claimed and standing ovation after standing ovation for his deplorable lack of humanity towards his fellow countrymen in Palestine.

Professor of Journalism, Peter Beinart, watched this disgraceful behaviour with Fadi Quran, a young Palestinian who is helping to coordinate Palestinian youth organization in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria; all united around one goal: to create a Palestinian Tahrir Square. They organized the unity march that helped pressure Fatah and Hamas to reconcile. Ten days ago, they organized the Nakba Day protests in which refugees marched on Israel’s borders resulting in a number of deaths. The protestors unarmed while the Israeli army fired live bullets.
Quran and his associates have been studying the Civil Rights movement and Gandhi’s struggle against the British and the movement that peacefully brought down Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. No one wants a second intifada, he insisted. “It hurt us much more than the Israelis.” Events in Egypt and Tunisia made Quran and his colleagues realize that nonviolence was possible on a much larger scale.
Beinhart claims that “anyone who has spent any time around Congress knows that many of the people who applauded Netanyahu—the Jewish Democrats in particular—don’t actually support his policies. Privately, many consider settlement expansion a catastrophe and the occupation a disgrace.” The excuse he offers for this extraordinary behaviour is that “they don’t want to create headaches for themselves”. “Could they say what they really believe and get reelected? Probably—after all, incumbents are very hard to beat. But who needs the hassle?”
I would suggest the people of Palestine who have suffered for decades do!
“What we want to do next,” Fadi added, “is freedom rides, like in the South. We’ll board settler-only buses and make them arrest us or beat us up.” He mentioned that many American Jews had participated in the civil rights movement. “So how will American Jews react if we do this,” he asked? “Do you think we’ll get any support, given your history?”
Professor Beinhart has little faith in the hearts and minds of his nation. I think stranger things have happened, who would have believed the fall of Mubarak et al when we were enjoying our Christmas dinners this year? It is a time of change and it has been too long coming.
Article adapted from Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, who is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
http://tinyurl.com/3n4ja9z
On Monday night, May 23, five brave activists disrupted Netanyahu's speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Gala and were also met with assaults. The young women who had spoken out were subjected not only to assault, but to sexual groping by male AIPAC attendees. But these activists felt compelled to speak out against Netanyahu's claim that returning to the 1967 borders would be "indefensible," when it is Israeli policies that are really indefensible: starving Gaza, occupying and stealing land, bulldozing homes, silencing dissent. The same day, at a press conference at the National Press Club about military aid to Israel and the dangerous role of the Israel Lobby, activist Allison Weir had her phone slugged out of her hand by an angry Zionist This sounds eerily similar to the alleged democracy in Israel where Palestinians and Israelis are routinely assaulted, arrested and jailed for speaking out against the Israeli occupation.

For the Palestinian people who live under Israel's 44-year-old military occupation, violence dominates everyday life. Zinad Samouni of Gaza is a living testament to this oppressive reality. She lost 48 family members during Israel's December 2008 bombardment of Gaza, and hers became yet another tragic story in a long history of home demolitions, land confiscation, and systematic violation of the Palestinians' basic human rights. After the massacre of the Samouni family, Israeli soldiers left behind racist graffiti such as "ARabs need 2 die'' and "1 is DOWN 999,999 TO GO."
http://tinyurl.com/3ulfd7t